What counts as a commitment

An undertaking recorded in an official communiqué, decision, or signed agreement between the African Union and CARICOM, or between either body and a partner institution acting under that relationship. Expressions of support, restatements of existing policy, and general aspirations are excluded.

Continental context

The commitments tracker also carries a short section on two African Union frameworks — the African Continental Free Trade Area and the AU Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons — that are not CARICOM commitments and do not meet the definition above. They are included because they are the continental infrastructure any AU-CARICOM trade or mobility commitment would eventually depend on. They are held to the same sourcing standard: where a widely circulated figure could not be traced to a primary source, that is stated and the figure is left out, rather than repeated.

What counts as a deadline

An explicit date, timeframe, or review point in the operative text. "As soon as possible" is not a deadline. "Within six months" is. Only commitments carrying a deadline appear in the implementation gap chart, because only those can be measured — and the number that carry none is itself among the more important findings here.

Status definitions

Delivered — the commitment has been met, with a source.
In progress — work is demonstrably under way but the commitment is not yet met.
Not delivered — the commitment remains unmet and no current activity is evident.
Unclear — we have no reliable information either way. This is a statement about the limits of our knowledge, not about the parties.

Sourcing

Every entry cites the document in which the commitment appears and, where the document is paragraph-numbered, the paragraph. Where a completion date is inferred rather than sourced, the entry says so explicitly.

Primary documents are preferred to press releases, and official hosts to mirrors. Where a third-party copy of a document is currently being cited, that is recorded as an outstanding item rather than quietly accepted.

Corrections

If an entry is wrong, or a commitment has been met and we have missed it, please write. Corrections are made promptly and the change is recorded rather than made silently. Where either secretariat wishes to comment on an entry, that comment will be published alongside it in full.

Outstanding verification

Two items are open. The final communiqué of the 1st Africa-CARICOM Summit is currently cited to a third-party host, no copy having been located on an African Union or CARICOM domain; copies have been requested from both secretariats. And it has not been established whether the governance constitutive statutes referred to at paragraph 20 of that communiqué were in fact adopted at the second summit in 2025.